Critic Reviews

• Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post

  A film that chafes, even as it ingratiates.

• Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune

  A tepid, cliché-ridden marriage comedy from South Africa.

• Wesley Morris, Boston Globe

  This is a movie so excited to exist that it overwhelms you with plot. Sitting through it is like opening the door to an overloaded closet. Stuff just tumbles out.

• Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle

  Some scenes are mild fun, but the mishaps that befall our hero aren't especially inventive, and although the South African setting provides a bit of interest, it's never really used incisively.

• Neil Genzlinger, New York Times

  An enjoyable film set in South Africa that makes full use of the country's lingering apartheid tensions and generational divides without ever losing its smile.

• V.A. Musetto, New York Post

  An affable comedy that, unfortunately, has too many characters and subplots for its own good.

• Sarah Boslaugh, Playback:stl

  ...the didactic and unbelievable nature of many of the conversations and events, sometimes emphasized by cross-cutting, strains the patience of even the most generous viewer.

• Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  While it's a relief to visit a side of Africa that's not beset by poverty and war, we learn little about the characters.

• Ian Buckwalter, DCist

  At its best when looking at the 21st century trying to get a foothold in a country where a rural landscape, centuries of indigenous tradition and decades of entrenched colonial racism make progress difficult.

• Chris Hewitt (St. Paul), St. Paul Pioneer Press

  When it's all over, it's no more satisfying than a not-bad sitcom.

• Gerald Peary, Boston Phoenix

  [A] pleasant, intentionally lightweight, South African road-movie romance with a sly integrationist political agenda.

• Beth Accomando, KPBS.org

  The film trivializes real problems in South Africa so I won’t feel bad saying that White Wedding makes it seem like the biggest danger facing the post-apartheid South African film industry is falling victim to Hollywood clichés.

• Ron Wilkinson, Monsters and Critics

  A cinematic soap opera that shows what can be done with expensive cars a high fashion clothes. Not much.

• Kelly Vance, East Bay Express

  From the evidence of Jann Turner's ingratiating comedy White Wedding, it's fair to say some groundbreaking is going on in South African cinema.

• Annlee Ellingson, Moving Pictures Magazine

  The conflict is superficial, easily rectified, but this allows a feel-good ending with little collateral damage.

• Diego Costa, Slant Magazine

  Whether this is Vegas or Cape Town, the girl stays home moping while the boys go out and play.

• Avi Offer, NYC Movie Guru

  A whimsical, uplifting, funny and unexpectedly engrossing journey with just the right balance of comedy and drama.

• Wilson Morales, AOL Black Voices

  While the plot is predictable, South Africa's 'White Wedding' is still an entertaining comedic film that audiences will find universally appealing.

• Nora Lee Mandel, Film-Forward.com

  Standard ingredients of predictable nuptial nonsense are given an enjoyable new spin in contemporary, middle-class, multiracial, multilingual South Africa.

Read all 19 critic reviews